Movietoons: Bacall to Arms (1946)

As cool as it is utterly incomprehensible, this Warner Brothers Merry Melodies Hemingway-noir mish-mash starring Laurie Be-Cool and Bogey Go-Kart (?) is a real curiosity. ERH can't decide whether it's won over by the jabbering zoot suited mayhem or put off by the aberrant sexuality, grating animation and dubious black-face finale (cf Aladdin), but either way we find ourselves stirred and confused in equal measure...

Caption Comp #3: The Serpent

"Ah. Now, I know how this looks..."

Dapper spymaster Dirk Bogarde's got his work cut out explaining away an al fresco dinner/mano-e-baldo swing session with foreign agent Yul Brynner in this charged, intimate still from 1973's stodgiest Euro-pudding The Serpent (co-starring Henry Fonda, Virna Lisi, and featuring sterling support from the likes of Igor De Savitch, Herbert Fux and ERH's new favourite, Ernst Fritz Furbringer).

The bloke in the bottom corner seems to be resolutely onside, but that ludicrous poppinjay in the centre of the frame doesn't look like he's having any of it, thank you very much.

Fruitiest caption wins a commemorative ERH mug...

Genre Specific: The Lives of Otters

To celebrate the release of Mel Gibson's sock-puppet meltdown The Beaver, Genre Specific - that one true magnetic North of cinematic certainty - looks into the small, soggy slew of films that make up the otter cycle - or, as we like to think of them, the otterdammerüng...

RGB: Electra Woman and Dyna Girl

The ERH Shit You Could Of Found On Youtube By Yourself Desk just found itself shunted nearer to the fire escape after 'digging up' the intro to nobody's favourite camp kiddies super-romp/ambulance chasing dayglo fire-risk 'Electra Woman and Dyna Girl'.

Whereas these days the cool kids chow down on 'Rastamouse', IMAX crack and WKD McFlurries, their pops had to pick on the bones of Electra Girl, Pearl and Dean and Milky Lunches.

No wonder we're now all liver-damaged man-children chasing the ebayed arcadia of a misremembered American childhood we never actually experienced...



Roll on death.

Photo Archive: 'Mr Jolly Lives Next Door'

To celebrate our delight in discovering that Channel 4 have dumped a steaming load of prime Comic Strip material - Funseekers, Bad News Tour, the sublime Eddie Monsoon - A Life? - onto Youtube for free, ERH has hit the files and dug up this winsome still from what might well be the staggeringly hit-and-miss troupe's finest hour, Mr. Jolly Lives Next Door.

Directed by the terminally grumpy Stephen Frears in between the fruity chill of Prick Up Your Ears and the icy frippery of Dangerous Liaisons, Mr Jolly sees the director cut loose with an aberrant, sleazy, gin-soaked little film that takes in celebrity assassination, fluffy bunny rabbits, blue-collar transvestism, Tom Jones and Camden Lock genocide, whilst simultaneously delivering a searing indictment of 1980's UK licensing hours.

It's been quite some time since anyone has had any cause to say so, but Channel 4, we hereby salute you!

'I feel sick. I don't know where the fuck I am. I think I had too much to drink last night.
My life is like a Red Lion, full of drunken Irishmen and gaming machines.
Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God!
... give me another scotch, you bastards.'
                                   Eddie Monsoon, The Vivisectionist (Unpublished Manuscript)

ERH Goes Bona Fide!

"Truly, this man was the son of God!"

Not since John Wayne affirmed the holiness of Jesus Christ - and played the joker in his pack of macho credentials - as an aw-shucks Roman centurion in The Greatest Story Ever Told have the great and the good bowed so low for simple, humble folk.

In a bid to right a couple of the many, many perceived wrongs that bedevil this august blog, the Big Nobs of UK film bible Sight&Sound have not only deigned to recognise the true power of the ERH juggernaut in ramming its cinematic peccadilloes down the throats of its blithe, uncaring readers, but also gives penitence to the film that has long held an unassailable claim to being our very favourite waste of time, Stephen J Tobolowsky's seminal slacker slap-fest Two Idiots in Hollywood. Scroll down to look upon these works, ye Mighty, and despair!

The next stage of our Project Mayhem is a bid to get Money Train preserved in the Smithsonian Library. Watch this space!